[ATOW] Attributes - obsolete?

[Carbon Elasmobranch]

Given that Attributes don't factor into Gunnery and Piloting/Anti-Mech skills in the board game context, and how there are already fixed target numbers for each skill, might it have been better just to eliminate them altogether and apply a gentler defaulting target number modifier?  Lifting capacity could be a skill; Edge, melee damage, fatigue and damage capacity differing from the average could be Traits.  It just seems as though Attributes are around to eat up XP at this point.

[MEP]

Lowering the default target numbers for skills still wouldn't take into account the differences between characters with different attributes. For instance, an Elemental trying to complete some feat of strength should have an advantage over your average fighter pilot regardless of training. The easiest way to represent this is to take into account the characters' respective strength attributes.

Sure, you could create a system where every single possible task is represented by a discrete skill with no attribute modifiers, but then you'd have a much more complicated system that would be very poorly suited to dealing with common tasks. Additionally, if you're training for these things or using traits then you have the option of creating a character with a very high carrying capacity but who can't pry a door open or something. Attributes reflect the character's physical and mental capacity, not just their training. Trying to represent the same information without attributes would be needlessly complex and prone to abuse.

Just because they aren't used in gunnery rolls in the board game anymore doesn't make them useless. For people using the AToW rules for actual roleplaying sessions they're practically vital. I can't imagine playing a game where the attribute scores don't contribute to most if not all of the rolls.

[Cannon_Fodder]

Our group just leaves it AToW all the time. Never convert back to base TW rules. We also use a custom 2D10 rule set. That combines AToW with bits of MW3/CBT:RPG Guide to Solaris 'Mech combat rules.

[A. Lurker]

In general RPG terms, attributes are ultimately just another character trait. And IMO, traits should mechanically stand for themselves; anything that doesn't come up or make a difference in play (intelligence-type traits can have this problem in some systems, for one example) can probably be painlessly dropped because the rules tend to care only about how good you are at performing a given task right now -- not how you got there.

That's a somewhat generic comment because I've yet to sit down and actually read AToW in depth, so don't know how much it applies in its particular case. :)

[Tslammer]

As Cannon Fodder said we made attributes important again in our game. The ATOW game seemed to be based (encourage) on attributes of 4 and skills of around 4. It did not seem to handle things beyond that hence the special pilot abilities. The problem is people would reach these skill levels fairly quickly. We also felt that while the Attributes in MW2 were to strong and costly they could still be used but not quite have the same point for point influence over the game. Together with a cheaper system for raising attributes our system seemed to mesh well with TW and ATOW rules. Granted we did need to change some of the combat to hit values and tables to 2D10.

To compensate the players for the increased attributes costs we increased our starting points to 5500 to allow players to have more than 4's. After two years of play testing one of which was under the old system and MW3 rules. We feel we have a pretty well rounded system. Correcting some early flaws in the MW3 Solaris rules that allowed a few exploits we felt needed closing.

[monbvol]

Frankly if you're playing a campaign where you're using Gunnery and Piloting skills so exclusively that attribute bonuses don't matter then in my opinion you're using the wrong book/playing the wrong level of detail game.

[A. Lurker]

Well, attributes still matter for purposes of raw attribute checks in AtoW, for one. Each point you have directly helps you beat that TN of 12 (or 18 for double attribute checks).

As far linking skills to attributes goes, well, that practice is something of a pet peeve of mine -- it's usually a standing invitation to min-max at the expense of character concept, for one thing, and you almost always seem to end up with at least one attribute that just doesn't do anything by itself other than provide skill bonuses --, but it's hard to blame the designers of the game when pretty much everybody else (at least everybody who's a Big Name in the RPG industry) also does it.

[Jackmc]

Frankly if you're playing a campaign where you're using Gunnery and Piloting skills so exclusively that attribute bonuses don't matter then in my opinion you're using the wrong book/playing the wrong level of detail game.

???  Attribute bonuses/penalties only come into play if you have an abnormally low or high attribute value and average character will never have one.

-Jackmc

[monbvol]

I don't have a lot of trouble getting an attribute bonus if I want one for my character.  Yet on the other hand I don't entirely dispute that most people will likely create mostly characters that do not have attribute modifiers.  It is all about personal preference and what each player considers important.  The thing though is that really doesn't change what I was trying to say.  Which was that if a campaign is so heavily focused on skills that never get attribute modifiers by the rules then I consider it a sign that you're playing the wrong scale of campaign if you're using AToW.

All said and done though I'm starting to believe that the attribute and skill relationship is a bit screwed up anyway.  Enough so that I still haven't thought of a good revision.  It is one of those rather complicated issues.

[Tslammer]

While I agree that you need to mix mech and out of Mech if your going to play the RPG. I speak from XP as last night I was beat up fairly bad in a Hand to hand fight. I had hoped to get the first guy but we both went out at the same time in true Rocky style. The problem was he had buddies and I did not.

The in mech skills not having attribute bonuses is an example of the system being broken. I can see why they needed this crutch I just don't agree with how its implemented.  Out of mech the guy with some solid attributes and some link lets call him Mr. Norris should be a problem for the guy with straight 4's lets call him Steve Urkle. In mech they are the same as skill is the only difference. This for me was to far a depart from the RPG I have played for so long. I think this is still a carry over from the MW3 gaming nanny over reaction.

[monbvol]

I'm starting to think even for 2d6 the TNs may need to be universally adjusted for trained skills by +3.  Considering it isn't difficult to get skill ranks of 3 or 4 with most characters it still offers a reasonable chance of success.

[A. Lurker]

The "in-'Mech skills" as presented in AtoW still get attribute bonuses (and penalties, for that matter) just like everything else. In fact, the same attributes that affect your Piloting and Gunnery just so apparently happen to be the ones that impact your combat performance the most in general.

Now it's true that by a strict reading, the conversion rules on AtoW p. 40 don't mention bonuses or penalties from Linked attributes. But really, when you already account for skill ranks and, at the GM's option, any relevant specialty modifiers, it's honestly not such a huge stretch to just apply them as well.

(It may be that I'm completely barking up the wrong tree here, but that's the only place I can think of at the moment where the notion that 'Mech skills are somehow unaffected by attributes might even come from. Of course "stock" non-roleplaying TW pilots and crews get no attribute bonuses -- their attributes are never actually stated anywhere and so are assumed to default to "average". 6, I believe it says in the "Attributes and Traits" paragraph running from AtoW p. 201 to 202. An actual RPG character converted to TW may differ.)

[Wombat]

Yeah I was building a test character and, after dumping about 2500XP on the lifepaths and another 2000 on attributes, I found I didn't have much left over for skills or traits...and I'm not sure thats a good thing.

I mean, what good is having God-like REF and DEX if it doesn't merit me anything towards my Gunnery skills, right?

[monbvol]

It can bail you out with other skills outside the cockpit?

I'll be honest it does kind of bother me that it is possible to be a -6/-6 as a dirty freeborn or a -7/-7 if a tankborn clanner when allowing attributes to contribute.  So how to fix that?  By saying attributes don't apply to some skills while they do others does create a bit much of a logical disconnect for me.  Upping the Target Numbers across the board could work fairly well but creates the problem of it takes more xp dumped into skills before the character even begins to approach acceptable levels of skill and could create a situation where the bonuses from attributes may become too important because it could become cheaper to selectively acquire attribute bonuses across most of your skills than to just increase the skill ranks to help make up the deficit.

[Jackmc]

Another problem is that even if TPTB reverse their decision (not unheard of, see Tac Ops Artillery Rules Errata) and allow ATT bonuses to affect the BT skills, it's not at all economical.  The 300+ points it takes to raise an Att from 4 to 7 is a major chunk of the purchase price for such things as Combat Sense or Natural Aptitude/Gunnery/Mech which are almost always more valuable than a +1 to Gunnery & Piloting. 

-Jackmc
   

[monbvol]

Ah but for that 300 XP you're also increasing skills other than Gunnery and Piloting.  Yes it is Battletech and the focus is ussually going to wind up on the mechs and the mechwarriors but at the RPG level of things I would hope other skills would come into play or why bother? 

Also considering you only need 4, 3.75 really but since AtoW doesn't allow for partial skills I rounded up, skills linked to that attribute at rank 3 before you actually get more for that 300 XP into one attribute than the same amount of XP applied directly to the skills in question.

Like I said before I'm starting to believe the relationship of attribute modifiers and skills is screwed up.

[Jackmc]

I'll be honest it does kind of bother me that it is possible to be a -6/-6 as a dirty freeborn or a -7/-7 if a tankborn clanner

It may be simply a case of getting used to running Old School style.  Way back in the day, FASA used to have truly elite MW's have skill levels in the negatives.  Plus, it's not like those types of MW's are a dime a dozen. 

For an "average" MW (which is an above average human), you need the almost unheard of skill level of 9+ to go into the negatives.  To drive that lower, you need to have abnormally high attributes which means you're an even smaller portion of the  already very unusual and very small population.

Now consider the total number of MW's in the IS.  In the 3060's, there were roughly 120 mech regiments in every IS House, plus Mercs, S7 Jocks, and Various Minor Powers (FRR, C*,WOB ect.).  Let's be generous and say that works out to 1200 mech regiments.  At ~120 mechs per regiment that's a pool of ~150,000 total mechwarriors.  Based off various charts in the BT game it looks like a MW with a 0 level skill occurs about 2.67% of the time so that would be a pool of 4,000 MW's.  Now that's just for a 0 level to go negative, it'd be an even smaller portion.  Let's say a skill 9+ MW is twice as rare as one with a 8+(what you need to have a BT score of 0).  That's 1.33% of all IS MW's and a pool of only around 2000. 

Now let's figure in the ATT's.  Human physical ability scores tend to be based off a bell curve.  Ordinarily I'd expect to see a /single/ ATT of 7 in only about 1/3rd the population.  So now we're down to 0.445% of the total IS MW population so that's only 668 scattered across the Sphere.  Now we are down to a really fuzzy area where you're having to estimate the frequency of multiple high physical characteristics.  Best case scenario would probably leave you with a total population of ~222 MW's while more realisitc cases would probably reduced that number down to 1 in 100 or 1000 thousand.

The Cliff Notes Version: Go ahead and allow negative skill levels because at any given time, an IS House probably has at most 1 to 2 of these MW paragons.                 
     
-Jackmc

[A. Lurker]

Actually, even with attributes contributing you couldn't technically get "a -6/-6 as a dirty freeborn". As per the "Superhuman Skills" section of the boxed text on p. 40 you'd still be limited to 0/0 at best in TW play...unless all players agree otherwise, and in that case you're effectively in House Rules Country anyway.

[Jackmc]

Ah but for that 300 XP you're also increasing skills other than Gunnery and Piloting. 

True, but I would argue that benefit isn't as powerful as it seems.  Almost all the skills that will benefit from those particular Att's are combat skills, and we already know that the default choice for these character types is to fight from their vehicles thus meaning those other skills seldom get used. 

-Jackmc

[Jackmc]

Actually, even with attributes contributing you couldn't technically get "a -6/-6 as a dirty freeborn". As per the "Superhuman Skills" section of the boxed text on p. 40 you'd still be limited to 0/0 at best in TW play...

We've already covered that quite a while back Lurker. 

FWIW, it's bad game design plain and simple.  Either support the level of play you give players access to or cap the system so they can't reach those levels; don't make it possible and then simply say "just don't go there."  It's very telling when one of the co-designers of the system house rules out this stuff.
 
-Jackmc

[A. Lurker]

We've already covered that quite a while back Lurker. 

FWIW, it's bad game design plain and simple.  Either support the level of play you give players access to or cap the system so they can't reach those levels; don't make it possible and then simply say "just don't go there."  It's very telling when one of the co-designers of the system house rules out this stuff.
 
-Jackmc

Whether you don't let attributes impact skills at all or whether you do but set a cap on the total is actually not the same thing.

That said, as I believe I may have mentioned before I'm not a big fan of linking skills and attributes in general anyway. You want a character who has both quick reflexes and a knack for gunnery? Fine, build him/her/it/whatever that way. But I genuinely don't see the point in having the rules then also toss you a free lunch by making said quick reflexes make that amazing gunnery skill cost even a single point less in turn; if you're getting the full benefit of both, you should also pay the full cost for them. Anything else is ultimately author favoritism.

[Tslammer]

The issues of link mods contributing to all skills except Piloting and gunnery was a problem for us when we started sorting ATOW out over a year ago.
Plus we had been used to MW1 and MW2 where Attributes had value and purpose. MW3 screwed things up so we side stepped MW3's issues.

When we looked at it many of the same things came up. If left to their own choices every Mech Warrior would be a combat sense natural gunnery fast
leaner. So we put our heads together the MW3 attribute issue was a hard hurdle to clear for us so back then. Then one of our group presented the
MW3 Solaris dueling rules. While we use the normal TW rules for mech combat instead of the odd Solaris dueling rules we did find a gem in them.
The one part that hooked me was each MW has his own defensive value. Rather than I am +3 because I moved x number of hexes. This system
rewarded movement and piloting skill levels. It also made attributes important to your defensive value.

The MW3 2D10 also made room in the probability spread. At least one of our players had expressed issues with the limits of the 2D6 and running out
 of room so the MW3 switch to 2D10 open ended allowed us to separate from the classic Piloting and Gunnery. Having open ended dice allows for even green guys to
get a lucky hit. It also allows for MOS to make certain weapon systems more attractive.

Currently in our group of 15 player characters we have only one natural gunner we had two but one died. We have a few with fast learner. Combat
sense I think is the most popular trait with 4 people having taken this. Waiting in the wings aka replacement characters we have one or two with
sixth sense. One character has stocked up on some out of mech traits like tough, fit, Pain Resistance.

Having all of this in front of us the decision to update our MW3 modification and apply the ATOW links made a lot of sense. While its a bit abstract from
the system everyone played for so long it feels like a natural development into a more evolved system.

Thus we are 2D10 heretic's.

[monbvol]

Even with the somewhat open ended 2d6 of AToW I am seriously starting to consider that 2d6 may be bad for an RPG anyway.  It does seem to create a few problems.  An increase of even +1 on 2d6 creates a fairly substantial shift while with 2d10 it isn't quite so excessive.

[Wombat]

What exactly is the link between attributes and Skills? Because if attributes don't affect skills, then why would a particular skill lend towards a particular attitibute? I would have assumed the TN would have factored that in.

- Still confused in Tulsa

[monbvol]

Well that is part of the logical disconnect I mentioned earlier.

There's no good explanation why an attribute of sufficient rank would add a bonus to one skill and not another.  Like in this case if we take Dexterity of 7 and the character has a Gunnery/Mech of 8 then the +1 from Dexterity would not apply to the Gunnery/Mech but if the character had say Art/Drawing 2 that would get the +1 from Dexterity.  They both would seem to benefit from a greater ability to finely manipulate small objects but based on the rules as written it seems they don't.

[Jackmc]

What exactly is the link between attributes and Skills? Because if attributes don't affect skills, then why would a particular skill lend towards a particular attitibute? I would have assumed the TN would have factored that in.

- Still confused in Tulsa

The link is the simple fact that people with certain physical or mental strengths do better in certain skills that's a proven fact.  Frex, one of the things that falls under the ATOW att DEX is hand eye coordination.  If the various video games are any indication, there's a direct relationship between hand eye coordination and the speed and skill which you can bring the crosshairs over a target and keep them on said target.  In a pen and paper game that is modeled by someone who has superb hand eye coordination (DEX 7+) having an easier time hitting targets (better to-hit number).  Where this analogy breaks down somewhat for me is having RFL affect Gunnery.  I can totally see how it would affect piloting, but in the point and click world of modern FCS's, not so much.  OTOH, I could see it factoring into Tactics as it would represent the mental agility needed to rapidly adapt tpo a changing tactical situation, somethign that isn't really well modeled by the INT att.

-Jackmc   

[Daryk]

Actually, even with attributes contributing you couldn't technically get "a -6/-6 as a dirty freeborn". As per the "Superhuman Skills" section of the boxed text on p. 40 you'd still be limited to 0/0 at best in TW play...unless all players agree otherwise, and in that case you're effectively in House Rules Country anyway.

Speaking of House Rules Country, way back in the day our MW1 campaign got into negative gunnery territory.  The GM handled it two ways: introducing the extreme range rules originally published in BattleTechnology (lasers to the horizon and such gave us cool things to do with that negative gunnery), and increased numbers of opponents (it doesn't matter how good you are, your armor will eventually run out).

[A. Lurker]

Where this analogy breaks down somewhat for me is having RFL affect Gunnery.  I can totally see how it would affect piloting, but in the point and click world of modern FCS's, not so much.

That would be true if BattleTech fire control was simply point-and-click. In practice, the fiction pretty consistently still has things operating at a computer-assisted but still quasi-manual level; the targeting system provides information and makes sure that the orientation of the physical guns agrees with the crosshairs on the display, but the tasks of actually tracking the (possibly dodging) target and pulling the trigger at just the right moment are still left up to the pilot. And I for one can certainly see a short reaction time helping with those aspects.

[Jackmc]

That would be true if BattleTech fire control was simply point-and-click. In practice, the fiction pretty consistently still has things operating at a computer-assisted but still quasi-manual level; the targeting system provides information and makes sure that the orientation of the physical guns agrees with the crosshairs on the display, but the tasks of actually tracking the (possibly dodging) target and pulling the trigger at just the right moment are still left up to the pilot. And I for one can certainly see a short reaction time helping with those aspects.

The fic's description of the interface as it's pretty much been how every BT pc game has handeled it.  it just seems to be way more about hand-eye coordination than reflexes.  Dunno maybe i'm biased ebcause one of my jobs requires me to be ableto eyebal targets executing rapid course changes while closing on oblique vectors.

-Jackmc

[A. Lurker]

The fic's description of the interface as it's pretty much been how every BT pc game has handeled it.  it just seems to be way more about hand-eye coordination than reflexes.  Dunno maybe i'm biased ebcause one of my jobs requires me to be ableto eyebal targets executing rapid course changes while closing on oblique vectors.

-Jackmc

Well, seems to me that at this point we're largely arguing semantics, then. I mean, where exactly do "reflexes" end and "hand-eye coordination" begin, and vice versa? Is there even a clear dividing line or do we get overlapping areas (trying to catch a falling object certainly would seem to benefit from the person in question having both instead of just one or the other, for example)?

I don't suppose there's by any chance a neurologist in the house? :)